It sounded like excellent advice, and she attempted to follow it. Breath by breath the raw visions and brutal sensations began to recede. Not gone, but fading into memories rather than stalking her in a waking nightmare.
She was in a room. Not really, though…a temporary room carved into a much larger one. Beyond the illusory wall of a shoji screen, voices and sounds echoed in urgent beats.
The mission! “Did it work?”
Perrin slid a pane in front of her. On it, brilliant explosions rippled across platform after platform after platform. They cascaded inward and outward as Rasu material plummeted into the star and the star swelled hungrily. Lattice scaffolding tore and fractured as new explosions erupted, tiny against the star’s vast surface but spreading like ants driven from their mound.
All the air left her lungs as she sank down onto the pillow—and instantly bolted back up. “Dashiel?”
Maris’ gaze drifted away. “They haven’t departed the system yet.”
She swung her legs off the cot and tried to rush for the War Room past the screen, forgetting she needed to stand before she could run. Vertigo sent her perception tumbling in and out of realities—one second she was back on the platform, in thousands of places at once and dying in most of them, and the next she was fixated on the cushiony softness of a blanket that had somehow become clutched in her hand. She felt agony, she felt loss, over and over and over….
“Nika?” Perrin’s hand was at her elbow. “Come back to us, okay?”
Right. This sole version of her had not died at the stronghold. She was alive, with her dearest friends at her side. She nodded shakily. “Yeah. I am. I just…tell Lance to get his ass out of there.”
“As if he would listen to us.”
“What’s the comm channel?”
Maris sent it to her, and she sent dual pings to Lance and Dashiel.
Don’t fry watching the show. Get out of there.
Palmer ignored her, but Dashiel’s response came swiftly.
Nika, you did it. The stronghold is disintegrating. I love you.
Then get back here so you can demonstrate your appreciation in person.
She exhaled and let her feet touch the floor, then gingerly tested out weight on them. When she didn’t collapse to the floor in a tangled pile of limbs, she reached out to wrap her arms around Perrin and Maris. “I’m so glad your faces were the first ones I saw when I woke up. Thank you so much for being here for me.”
Perrin squeezed her tight. “Always.”
Maris gave her a mysterious half-smile. “As she says.”
Maris’ definition of ‘always’ was doubtless more expansive than Perrin’s, but Nika valued them both equally, and beyond what she could measure.
But her work wasn’t yet done. “Also, never tell anyone what a disaster I was when I first woke up.” She withdrew from the embrace and motioned toward the gap in the screen. “Let’s see what we can do to help.”
She spotted Cameron and Terry huddled together in front of a chaotic bank of panes at the far end of the War Room. “What’s the situation?”
Cameron looked her way in surprise. “Nika, you’re awake! What was it like in there?”
“Hell. Tell me it was worth it.”
“Right.” Cameron studied her briefly then motioned to the panes, which appeared to be displaying the same scene Perrin had showed her moments earlier, multiplied many times over. “Our close-range sensors have been destroyed, which is a good sign. It means the stellar activity is taking out everything in a close orbit. Here’s the last visuals the Dauntless captured.”
The scene on one of the panes shifted to reveal a vortex similar to the one that had nearly eaten the Wayfarer during their trip to the stronghold. Only its cohesiveness was breaking down, flinging little whirlpool eddies out to rip holes in space. Rasu ships large and small tumbled into the convulsing wormhole—
—a wave of plasma, light and energy swept across space to consume everything. The pane went blank.
“Gods….” She spun back to Cameron. “You said the ‘last’ visuals. The last before what?”
“They cut it close, but they’ve escaped the system and are headed home.”
A wave of relief-fueled dizziness washed through her, and the fading remnants of her earlier vertigo spiked to join it. She placed a steadying hand on the wall. “Good. What about casualties?”
“At last count, we lost twenty-three ships, with crews ranging from one to five each. The Taiyoks are being typically tight-lipped regarding the health of their fleet. We know they lost a minimum of twelve vessels, but the number is probably higher. Elder Zhanre’khavet says their surviving ships have departed the stellar system and are returning to Toki’taku.”
“I’ll talk to him later. Express our appreciation and see if I can get out of him whether they need any assistance in their recovery.” She gestured to the panes. “The fireworks show is marvelous, but what do we definitively know about Rasu losses?”
“The Dyson lattice has been annihilated, and the nodes along with it. We recorded catastrophic damage or confirmed destruction of 6,815 of platforms and over 30,000 vessels, but the numbers are without question far higher. We have every reason to believe every single platform orbiting the star has been destroyed or will be within the next hour and the outer orbit of satellites in the next two hours, but it will take our long-range sensors a day to confirm this.
“A Rasu leviathan was trying to escape through the wormhole you saw on the visuals. It broke apart as it was entering the vortex and disappeared. We obviously don’t know the terminus point of the wormhole, so we can’t confirm if the vessel traversed and exited the wormhole, or its state if it did so.”
It was a complication, but if they got through this with nothing but pieces of a single Rasu escaping obliteration, they would have succeeded beyond her wildest fantasies.
It had never been more than a desperate shoestring of a plan, cobbled together with the fervor of the doomed. And it had worked.
She took a deep breath and did her best to inject authority and encouragement into her voice. Gods, she was tired. She felt as if she’d run a thousand marathons today…because in a way, she had. But the people in the room looked to her for guidance and inspiration. Their leader, their beacon.
“Everyone, you’ve done an incredible job today. This week, this month. The details will take a little while to sort out, but I daresay you’ve saved the Dominion. You’ve saved all of us. Congratulations.”
She smiled and acknowledged the cheers that broke out, then turned back to Cameron and lowered her voice. “Stay on full alert…if nothing changes, for another four hours. Ping me immediately if anything does change. After that, it’ll be time to start thinking about how we protect ourselves from the longer-term consequences of what we’ve done today.”
NAMINO
This time, Nika was waiting on him at the spaceport. A different spaceport, one busily managing a fleet of returning military ships. A victorious fleet.
The hull of the Dauntless bore dozens of scorch marks and a ten-meter-long gash beneath its aft section. It was supposed to be a command vessel, but Lance hadn’t exactly played it safe, had he?
She lurked off to the side of the ramp, hopefully hidden from view, and waited until Dashiel had descended the ramp to leap out from the shadows and wrap him up in her arms.
“Nika!” He lifted her in the air to twirl her around. “You did it.”
“We did it.” She kissed his lips, then his nose, then his eyelids, then craned her head back to meet his gaze. “It looks as though you had an exciting time of things.”
“There might have been a few tense minutes, and a few more of utter terror. But nothing compared to what you endured. Will you tell me what it was like for you?”
Her gaze dropped to study the woven fabric of his shirt.
“It’s okay. If it was painful, you don’t have to talk about it. I won’t make you relive it.”
“It was. But it w
as also incredible and world-altering and…I’m still trying to figure it all out. I will tell you about it, but not just yet. Is that all right?”
“Of course. We have time now.”
She nuzzled his nose as he eased her to the ground. She thought she saw Lance disembarking in her peripheral vision, but he could wait his turn. “What’s the status of the d-gates?”
“All destroyed. We dropped sensors on our way through, then watched as they exploded one after another. Any Rasu who survived will have to find us the hard way. But we need to be able to protect ourselves when they do.”
She nodded. “Yes, we do, and we already have some ideas on that. Want to head to the Pavilion with me and hear about them?”
He groaned. “I don’t get to sleep now?”
“Soon, darling. Soon.”
54
* * *
MIRAI ONE PAVILION
Nika studied Parc with a healthy dose of skepticism. “And this is really feasible?”
“The ceraffin think so.”
She sighed as they strolled beneath the canopy of the snowbell trees outside the Pavilion. Yes, the ceraffin had played a number of important roles in helping them to destroy the Rasu stronghold. They’d sifted through the science and the numbers in novel ways on the KA bombs and the Rasu programming code; her own ceraff had made it possible for 8,000 copies of her to work together to navigate the maze of a city-sized Rasu platform and disable the stronghold’s safeguards. They were poised to revolutionize Asterion society in ways no one could yet fathom.
But ceraffin were simply a bunch of Asterions in intimate mental proximity, and she refused to abandon valuing the individuals behind the collective.
“What do you think?”
“Yeah. It’s feasible. It’ll be expensive as all hells, and it’s going to require the invention of new materials, new ways to combine them, new programming and so on. It’ll be a gargantuan undertaking. But we can do it. We can create planet-scale cloaking shields that will hide us from the Rasu.”
“Then let’s do it. Do you want to be in charge?”
Parc grunted. “Hells, no. Being in charge means responsibility. I’m already on to the next revolutionary idea.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll let you know when we think of it. Possibly large, deployable weapons based on the archine blade, or a family of smart worms designed to fuck up Rasu systems. Oh, and we’ve already got a theoretical model for a variation on d-gates that won’t require a fixed terminus point to use. It’ll revolutionize space travel.”
“Seriously?”
“So seriously. I’m recommending we call it a Sukasu Gate. Don’t worry, you’ll be hearing a lot about it in a few days. As for the planetary shielding? Honestly, your sweetie should be in charge of the initiative. Maybe it’ll distract him from developing a counter to kamero filters once he finishes designing a commercial ceraff node.”
“We’re not rebels any longer, Parc.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t have a passing use for a kamero filter from time to time. Or, I mean Ryan does.”
“Uh-huh.” They reached the entrance to the Pavilion, which finally looked as good as new, and she patted him on the shoulder. “All right, I have to go meet with some people. Keep the ideas coming.”
Grant was waiting on her in the first-floor lounge. She gave him a hug, though it felt weird for a thousand reasons. “Thanks for agreeing to come by.”
He withdrew from the hug quickly, as if he shared her discomfort. “I told you before—you ask of me what you need to.”
For the millionth time since all this began, she wished she could remember every second of the last 700,000 years. They had been frequent friends over those aeons, and lovers somewhat less often. His declaration, and the weighty yet resolute sentiment adding conviction to his words, hinted at the complexity of that history, forever lost to her.
She smiled hesitantly and leaned against the table behind her. “Funny you say that, because I am going to ask something of you. I wish I didn’t need to—you have a great life, and I don’t want to disrupt it—but the time has come for all of us to dedicate ourselves to something greater than ourselves. Grant, it’s time for you to rejoin the world and step up, maybe in a way only First Genners can. Step up to fight for not just our way of life, but our lives, period.”
“I know it is.” He stared at the floor for several seconds before nodding thoughtfully. “It was a nice 100,000 years while it lasted. What do you need me to do?”
She exhaled in relief. She’d worried he’d require a harder sell. “Use what you’ve learned in those 100,000 years and apply your clever, crafty psyche to some new initiatives. I want you to work with Lance Palmer and Dashiel to design new warships. Design modifications to existing warships and whatever other crazy ideas you can devise. We need ships that play to Asterion strengths and incorporate new tech the ceraffin are developing. Ships that can use Taiyok stealth capabilities and better weapons to match the Rasu on the battlefield.”
“Is that all?” He winked at her, and for a moment everything was okay between them again. “I can live with those directives.”
“Wonderful. Come upstairs with me and join the team.”
Couches and lounge chairs had taken the place of tables and workstations in what had briefly been the War Room. Even if they couldn’t relax as such, they could act as if they were relaxing while they worked.
Then Cameron wheeled in a cooler stocked full of beer and cocktails…so perhaps they were relaxing.
Nika settled in next to Dashiel on one of the couches and watched with a trace of amusement as Grant was welcomed as an old friend by Lance. Because of course he was.
She dropped her head onto Dashiel’s shoulder, murmuring in contentment when he kissed her hair. They’d slept for fourteen solid hours the evening, night and morning before—then made love, cooked breakfast and gone back to bed for another four hours. On waking the second time, she’d almost begun to feel like herself. It had been a decadent luxury to indulge in and sorely needed, but they couldn’t afford to laze around any longer.
She did accept a beer from Adlai as she stood and turned in a slow circle, checking to make certain everyone was here. “I hope everyone slept half as well as I did last night, because our work is just beginning.
“We understand some things about our enemy now, and we’ve bought ourselves time—time we must use to get ready for when they show up. Because they will show up. There are Rasu still in this galaxy—vessels that were out on patrol or missions when we destroyed the stronghold and vessels that escaped during our attack—and we should be prepared today to encounter them.
“The far more serious threat, however, lies with the multitude of Rasu currently inhabiting hundreds of other galaxies. Sooner or later, they will notice their colleagues here in the Gennisi galaxy have gone silent. They will send a team to investigate, and when they do, they will learn they have an enemy here. An enemy who will not consent to be enslaved or annihilated.
“Not long after then, they will find one of our worlds, or they will find Toki’taku or Chosek. If we want to be ready for when they arrive, we have to start now.
“Several ceraffin have been digging into the Taiyok stealth technology, and they think they’ve come up with a method to build what is effectively a planet-sized kamero filter.” She arched an eyebrow at Dashiel. “Parc is ready to talk your ear off on this topic for about five hours whenever you have…five hours.”
“I will make time tomorrow.” He pursed his lips. “I can’t promise five hours, but I’ll try for three.”
“Good enough. Lance, the Advisors had a conversation last night, and we are all in agreement. You are hereby promoted to Advisor status—the first Advisor in a new Military Division.”
He chuckled and sipped on his beer. “About godsdamn time.”
“I agree, but I hope you’re prepared for the work coming with the position. Build us a fleet. Agile ships, powerful ships, hardy ship
s, fast ships, whatever you think we can best use against the enemy. A few weeks ago, Delacrai said to me that in ten thousand years we could not build a military force to match the one the Rasu had stationed here, without considering what manner of forces they have stationed in other galaxies. She was right, but if we’d started eight years ago, we’d be millions of ships closer today. So, we start today.”
She motioned to Grant, who had sat next to Maris off to the left. “Grant’s the best ship and space-rated-equipment designer I know. I suspect he has some ideas to bounce off of you.”
Grant jerked his head in Lance’s direction. “We already set up a meeting for tomorrow.”
“Fantastic. There are a dozen other initiatives we need to start, and a dozen more we need to think up then start. We are going to turn the productive output of the Dominion to a single purpose: preparing for the Rasu. We’re going to do it openly, with the constant input of ideas, criticisms and hard work from all our citizens. We’re going to have to learn new things and new ways to do them. We’re going to have to adapt and change, maybe in some pretty big ways.
“And we’ll do it, because we will always find a way to not merely survive, but thrive. This is what being an Asterion means.”
Lance cleared his throat. “I hate to put a damper on the inspirational mood here, but we need to talk about our Rasu—about Jerry. You made it a promise you shouldn’t have. Doing so got us vital intel we put to excellent use, but now our prisoner will be wondering when we plan to hold up our end of the bargain. For the record, I vote we close up the facility restraining it and throw away the lock code.”
She nodded soberly. “I know you do. And you might be right. But I gave my word, and I won’t break it now. We’ll wait another week, then if the skies remain quiet, we’ll return Jerry to the planet where we captured it and release it—and we’ll station a mobile probe in orbit to watch it and, if it leaves, to follow it. Good enough?”
Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4) Page 93
